Remote Control? Andy Clunie-Wicks
When the country first went into lockdown in March 2020, many schools scrambled around to try and provide any kind of remote education at all, let alone any that was effective. My own school was quite lucky because we were already using an online communication platform that parents were very engaged with, which meant it was relatively easy to set up online learning for our children and monitor the level of engagement fairly easily. We could set up work online for children and see they were engaged in it. Many other schools in our trust, however, had to suddenly switch to using unfamiliar tools very quickly and at short notice: to say it was a steep learning curve was a massive understatement! In my role of Computing Champion for the Trust, I was the first port of call to help sort out technical and other issues for children, parents and teachers. After the initial panicky couple of weeks, the number of help requests dropped off dramatically and we could focus on the level of engagement in this strange new world of online learning.
Remote learning Phase 1: March - July 2020 This first phase of online learning used Google Classroom to set assignments and tasks. Teachers also recorded videos to explain the lessons to the children and uploaded them to Class Dojo (our
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school’s main communication platform). The main issue for teachers was finding a balance between providing enough material for children to work on at home and making it interesting, engaging and relevant to the curriculum. We also had to provide work for key worker and vulnerable children who were still in school, so teachers soon settled into a daily routine of providing online work that children would complete either in school or at home depending on their circumstances. During this first phase, feedback from parents and some children was very positive. Some teachers thrived on having to find new ways of teaching their subjects at arm’s length, while other staff members enjoyed improving their computing skills. As time moved on, though, it soon became very clear that some children were not taking part in every lesson, while a significant proportion were not engaging in any online learning at all. Through monitoring, feedback and contacting parents we realized there were a few barriers to engagement. The first, and most common barrier, was a lack of devices for home use. We surveyed our children prior to lockdown to assess whether they had technology at home to join in remote learning, loaned Chromebooks to families that told us they had nothing and arranged training for parents to help them support their children. As the days passed, it became clearer that a lot of our children
